《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 87 (205):我最欣賞的人

At the moment, the person I'm enjoying the most is Ketut. The old man—truly one of the happiest humans I've ever encountered—is giving me his full access, the freedom to ask any lingering questions about divinity, about human nature. I like the meditations he has taught me, the comic simplicity of "smile in your liver" and the reassuring presence of the four spirit brothers. The other day the medicine man told me that he knows sixteen different meditation techniques, and many mantras for all different purposes. Some of them are to bring peace or happiness, some of them are for health, but some of them are purely mystical—to transport him into other realms of consciousness. For instance, he said, he knows one meditation that takes him "to up."

目前，我最欣賞的人是賴爺。這位老人——確實是我遇過最快樂的人之一——允許我有完全的自由去詢問他任何縈繞在我心中有關神靈、人性的問題。我喜歡他教我的禪修，簡單而逗趣的"讓肝臟微笑"，以及令人感到心安的"四兄弟法"。有天藥師告訴我，他懂得十六種不同的禪坐法，以及切合不同需要的多種咒語。有些爲了帶來和平或快樂，有些針對健康，但有些只是單純的神祕咒語——將他送往其他的知覺境界。比如，他說知道一種帶他去"上面"的禪坐法。

"To up?" I asked. "What is to up?"

"上面？"我問，"什麼是上面？"

"To seven levels up," he said. "To heaven."

"去上面七層，"他說，"去天堂。"

Hearing the familiar idea of "seven levels," I asked him if he meant that his meditation took him up through the seven sacred chakras of the body, which are discussed in Yoga.

聽見這熟悉的"七層"觀念，我問他是否指禪坐帶他穿越瑜伽所謂體內的神聖七重輪。

"Not chakras," he said. "Places. This meditation takes me seven places in universe. Up and up. Last place I go is heaven."

"不是七重輪，"他說，"是地方。這種禪坐法帶我去宇宙的七個地方，一層一層上去，最後抵達天堂。"

I asked, "Have you been to heaven, Ketut?"

我問："你去過天堂嗎，賴爺？"

He smiled. Of course he had been there, he said. Easy to go to heaven. "What is it like?"

他微笑。他當然去過天堂。他說，去天堂並不難。

"Beautiful. Everything beautiful is there. Every person beautiful is there. Everything beautiful to eat is there. Everything is love there. Heaven is love."

"天堂什麼樣子？"

Then Ketut said he knows another meditation. "To down." This down meditation takes him seven levels below the world. This is a more dangerous meditation. Not for beginning people, only for a master.

"很美。那兒一切都很美。美麗的人。美麗的食物。那兒的萬事萬物都是愛。天堂即愛。"賴爺接着說他知道另一種禪坐。"去下面。"這種去下面的禪坐，帶他前往地下七層，是一種危險的禪坐法。初學者不宜，只適合能手。

I asked, "So if you go up to heaven in the first meditation, then, in the second meditation you must go down to . . . ?"

我問："所以，第一種禪坐帶你上天堂，那麼，第二種禪坐肯定帶你……"

"Hell," he finished the statement.

"下地獄。"他講完句子。

This was interesting. Heaven and hell aren't ideas I've heard discussed very much in Hinduism. Hindus see the universe in terms of karma, a process of constant circulation, which is to say that you don't really "end up" anywhere at the end of your life—not in heaven or hell—but just get recycled back to the earth again in another form, in order to resolve whatever relationships or mistakes you left uncompleted last time. When you finally achieve perfection, you graduate out of the cycle entirely and melt into The Void. The notion of karma implies that heaven and hell are only to be found here on earth, where we have the capacity to create them, manufacturing either goodness or evil depending on our destinies and our characters.

這很有趣。我不常聽印度教討論天堂地獄的觀念。印度人從因果報應的觀點看待宇宙，一種永恆的循環過程，也就是說，當你走到生命盡頭，最終的安息地並非某個地方——不是天堂也不是地獄——而是以另一種形式再次循環，回到世間，以解決上輩子尚未完成的關係或錯誤。終於獲致完美之時，你從循環中完全脫離出來，融入無極之境。因果循環的觀念暗示着，天堂與地獄只在塵世間看得見；因爲依照自身的命運和性格，我們可以做出善行與惡行，而由此創造出天堂與地獄。